Philip Larkin: Collected Poems

London: Faber & Faber, 1988. 1st (3rd imp). h/b. Very good, 1st edition (3rd impression, pub same year), clipped d/j, brown clothbound boards, white spine titling; text block firm, pages crisp and unmarked. Loose insert leaflet: Philip Larkin at the University of Hull. 8vo (230 x 150 / 9"" x 6""). In 1988, three years after Larkin's death, this 390-page omnibus was published under a shared Faber/Marvell imprint, edited by Larkin's friend and executor, Anthony Thwaite. It aimed to include all the poems finished by Larkin as an adult, plus a selection of verses from his teens. Containing no fewer than 83 previously unpublished poems, it added greatly to what had been previously known of his work. In 2003, Thwaite published a more concise (218-page) ÒCollected PoemsÓ, which included only work Larkin had published in his lifetime, omitting such revealing poems as Love Again: purchasers of this volume, in order to acquire LarkinÕs full canon, needed to supplement it with the 2005-published extended edition of Larkin's Early Poems and Juvenilia, which is why this 1988 edition remains the favoured volume of his lifetimeÕs work.